


Teenage Dirtbag

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - 90's, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Optimistic Ending, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:38:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4370480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <br/>
  <i>It scares her, how fast she falls in love with him.</i>
  <br/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teenage Dirtbag

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nadiaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiaa/gifts).



> This ship is going to kill me. 
> 
> Written in accordance with vaguely threatening encouragement/enabling from [muclbloods](http://muclbloods.tumblr.com), who wasted no time and [made a pretty thing](http://muclbloods.tumblr.com/post/124589093478/she-meets-reguluss-eyes-from-across-the-room) for this story.
> 
> If you think I didn't listen to "Wonderwall" a lot while writing this, you are wrong.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> xoxo

* * *

 

** 1995 **

 

* * *

 

**_July_ **

\--

The news breaks on a Monday.

_“—fourteen staff members taken into police custody after an anonymous tip—”_

_“—extensive evidence of the practicing of Satanic rituals on school grounds, including but not limited to the consumption of animal blood—”_

_“—linked to several recent hate crimes in the area, mostly targeting the older, lower-income neighborhoods at the lakefront—”_

_“—St. Riddle’s Preparatory Academy for Boys to close pending further federal investigation—”_

It’s not a joke.

It’s a _scandal_.

 

* * *

 

**_August_ **

\--

There’s a heat wave the week before school starts.

Lily is sprawled out in a cherry-red Adirondack chair in the Potters’ backyard. Her sunglasses are perched on the very end of her nose, her hair is pushed back from her face with a wide denim headband, and two of her bracelets’ smooth silver ball chains—ceramic block letters that spell out ‘Lily’ strung through one, ‘Best Friends’ through the other—are warm against her skin. She’s in a bathing suit, a bright white two-piece she’d had to steal back from Petunia, and sweat is beginning to slide down the nape of her neck and settle between her collarbones.

The air is still, hazy with humidity, and the sun is so hot that it’s blurry around the edges when she tries to look up at it.

James, Peter, and Sirius are all in the water, having an increasingly ridiculous sword fight with a trio of neon-colored Styrofoam pool toys.

Marlene is dozing on a beach towel in the shade of the tamarack trees, a bottle of cotton candy blue nail polish lying uncapped and forgotten at her feet.

Remus is sitting with Lily, fiddling with the spine of a dog-eared copy of _Jurassic Park_ , gaze trained on Sirius, expression vacillating rapidly between alarm and fondness and exasperation and amusement and _concern_ —

“What’s wrong?” Lily asks him, keeping her voice soft.

Remus squints at the grey cement ground of the patio, the freckles on the bridge of his nose almost disappearing under the glow of his peeling pink sunburn.

“You know that thing with St. Riddle’s? Last month?”

Lily nods.

“Yeah. It was weird, right? Like something out of a Marilyn Manson video.”

Remus grimaces.

“Well, Sirius’s brother…he went there,” he says quietly. “To Riddle’s.”

“Oh. _Oh_. So—”

“So he’s going to be at school with us, yeah, and Sirius—I just don’t…I don’t think he’ll handle it well, especially not after what happened with his parents.”

Lily’s mouth twists, and a mosquito lazily swoops in to buzz around her ear; she swats at it, misses, and then swats at it again.

“His parents are _assholes_.”

Remus snorts.

“Can’t imagine his brother’s much better, to be honest.”

 

* * *

 

**_September_ **

\--

Sirius’s brother is named Regulus.

He’s tall and slender, good-looking in that same haughty, slightly arrogant way that Sirius is—all thick, shiny black hair and fine-boned patrician features and a full, sensuous red mouth; the only difference, as far as Lily can tell, is that Regulus’s lips seem to naturally turn down at the corners, like his face is etched in a permanent pout, pronounced and frankly sulky.

It’s disarming.

She doesn’t really know why.

Remus discreetly points him out to her in the cafeteria before school, where he’s sitting with a small group of people from St. Riddle’s; Regulus has on a dark green flannel and a pair of expensive grey jeans, brown leather boots and a khaki canvas backpack slung across his shoulders. His posture is stiff. His expression is blank. She notices that he isn’t talking to his friends, and has an inane, unwelcome thought about how he seems very fundamentally _out of place_ —like he doesn’t want to be where he is but isn’t sure where else he can go.

The bell rings.

She shakes her head.

Two hours later, he’s walking into their senior chemistry class, alone and clearly nervous. Sirius glares at his burgundy notebook, ignoring Remus’s urgent, plaintive muttering; meanwhile, Slughorn is greeting Regulus with a predictable twitter of his moustache and a hearty clap on the back.

“Thought we’d partner you with your brother, if that’s alright with you, Sirius? Keep it in the family, so to speak,” he chortles.

Sirius shoots Slughorn a tight, terse smile.

“Don’t have a brother, actually,” he says smoothly. “Unless you meant James?”

Lily almost cringes at how awkward the ensuing silence is. And she wants to look over at Sirius’s brother—at _Regulus_ —

So she does.

She meets his eyes from across the room and is surprised when he doesn’t immediately look away—no, he staresat her, gaze piercing and deceptively _hard_ , even from a distance, and it isn’t uncomfortable, no, but it isn’t _comfortable_ , either—it’s all prickling self-awareness and fathomless curiosity and she doesn’t quite recognize any of the feelings suddenly springing up like fucking flowers in the pit of her stomach, no, but she _does_ recognize the pressing, pulsing, _persistent_ need to know more, to know who he is and what he’s doing carrying himself as if he’s afraid of his own shadow and _why_ , why he had initially looked at Sirius like he was desperate to say something and why he keeps scratching at his forearm like that and—and why, why, _why_ is he still staring at her?

She swallows.

He intrigues her.

She wonders if that’s a mistake.

 

* * *

 

**_October_ **

\--

Petunia comes home for her college’s fall break on Halloween night.

Lily is standing in front of her bedroom mirror on her tip-toes. She has a mascara wand pinched between her fingers and a Jane’s Addiction album blaring from the boom box speakers on top of her dresser. The green velvet halter dress that she’d bought for Frank Longbottom’s party is spread across her bed, still on the wire hanger. Her lipstick is a matte plum color and the gleaming gold and garnet choker locket that her parents had given her for Christmas the year before—Petunia had gotten one, too, with sapphires—is already strapped around her throat.

“Hey,” Petunia greets her from the doorway, lips automatically puckering with distaste as she looks Lily up and down. “Are you going out?”

Lily hums.

“There’s a party.”

“Your curfew’s one-thirty this year, remember? Just like mine was.”

“Gosh— _thanks_ , sis, it’s like I totally haven’t been following that rule for _months_. On my own.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What?”

“ _On my own_ ,” Petunia mimics with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “You said it like…I don’t know, like it _meant_ _something_.”

“Well, obviously it didn’t.”

Petunia scoffs

“Sure. Whatever.”

Lily huffs out an impatient sigh.

“Did you need something other than attention, Petunia? Or can this conversation be over?”

Petunia’s eyes dart to Lily’s half-open closet and linger— _petulantly_ , Lily thinks—on the pleated blue skirt of Lily’s cheerleading uniform.

“One-thirty,” Petunia sneers before stomping down the hall. “Don’t forget, _sis_.”

 

* * *

 

**_November_ **

\--

It’s a few minutes after midnight by the time Lily makes it to the backyard at Frank’s.

She just wants to step outside, get a lungful of fresh air—except the St. Riddle’s crowd is lurking in an ominous huddle over by the veranda, clutching cigarettes and white paper Dixie cups, a red-and-black zigzag hacky-sack lying forgotten at their feet. Regulus is with them, standing slightly apart from the rest of the group, wearing jeans and a snug-fitting motorcycle jacket—he notices her before his friends do, but he doesn’t move to talk to her, to properly introduce himself, and she feels wobbly and off-kilter in her patent leather heels.

She goes back inside.

A half-hour later, she’s walking to her car when she sees Regulus again. He’s sitting alone on the curb, legs splayed and Doc Martens crunching against the asphalt as he smokes a joint and squints up at the moon; the sky isn’t clear enough for him to be looking at the stars.

And Lily hesitates for a second—less than that, if she’s being honest—before she plops down next to him on the sidewalk, consciously remembering to leave at least six inches of space between their bodies.

He glances at her.

She shrugs.

Very faintly, she hears cheering and then the straining intro chords of that Oasis song— _Wonderwall_ , she thinks, absentmindedly twirling her hair.

Regulus shifts, bumping her elbow with his own.

She licks her lips.

Wordlessly, he offers her the joint between his thumb and forefinger.

And she appraises him with curious eyes and an even more curious thrill of fizzing, spider-shock anticipation slinking like a virus through her bloodstream—and she doesn’t care to examine why she’s reacting to him so strongly, not then and not there and not like _that_ —so she gestures to her car, a boxy Volvo station wagon that she’d inherited from Petunia, and the very first thing she ever says to him is—

“I know a place we can go.”

She drives them to the lake, to the old whitewashed boathouse that had been built eighty years earlier for wealthy weekend tourists and subsequently left to rot during the Great Depression. It’s abandoned, still sturdy, and opens right onto a long, narrow dock with several missing planks.

“Yeah?” he asks, holding out the joint.

“Sure,” she says.

And he doesn’t speak anymore and neither does she but eventually, she kicks off her shoes and eventually, they creep across the outer edge of the dock and eventually, they get to the end—and she stares down at the water, at the gently lapping midnight-blue waves hitting the soggy, swollen, moss-covered wood—and she wonders if the lake has always been so murky, so _cloudy_ , or if it’s just her, just them, just the night and the smoke and _him_.

“If this is about Sirius, I don’t—I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, okay?” he says, voice hoarse and scratchy.

Lily snorts so loudly that she has to belatedly clap her hand over her mouth.

“You think— _no_ ,” she replies, jostling his shoulder with her own. “I have enough sibling drama without incorporating _yours_ into my daily life, thanks.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Brother?”

“Sister.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. We were—close. She was my best friend.”

“What happened?”

Lily picks at the sheen of glittery violet polish on her thumbnail, watching with disinterest as it flakes off, fluttering away in the late autumn breeze.

“I started ninth grade, right? And she was all… _Lily, let’s go out for cheerleading_ —” Lily breaks off, swallowing, and twitches her nose. “So we went out for cheerleading. And I got picked for varsity and she…didn’t.”

Regulus pokes at the frayed inner seam of the hole in his jeans.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says, nonplussed.

And Lily grins, a giggle bubbling up the back of her smoke-scarred throat.

“That’s _Petunia_.”

 

* * *

 

**_December_ **

\--

The weather gets colder and their flannels get thicker and Lily finds herself spending more and more time with Regulus Black.

They return to the boathouse armed with crocheted wool blankets and cashmere afghans and the gunmetal grey duvet from his bed; they sit cross-legged, side by side, eating Hershey kisses by the handful and playing I-Spy with the clouds; and she brings Monopoly one night and he brings two six-packs of shitty beer and it’s _fun_.

Because there’s electricity in the air when he smiles and there’s thunder on the horizon when he laughs and sometimes, when his hand just barely brushes hers and _stays_ —she feels caught up, _swept up_ , in the wind and the rain and the storm of it, of _him_ , and all she can suddenly think about doing is reaching out to touch—the lightning, the darkness, the _danger_ —

She drives them to a diner in Montauk a few days before Christmas for grilled cheese sandwiches—avocado with melted slices of Swiss and cheddar and Havarti on thick-cut marble rye—and he pauses at the payphone installed on the sidewalk outside, his expression swiftly rippling with a series of emotions that she suspects are too complicated to individually identify.

But she doesn’t ask and he doesn’t offer an explanation and then they’re in a red vinyl booth decorated with ropes of tinsel and miniature poinsettias and holiday Elvis paraphernalia and there’s Nat King Cole crooning from the blinking neon jukebox behind the counter and it’s almost too easy to relax, to split a peanut butter milkshake and lose track of whose straw is whose—and then he’s chewing on his lower lip and slouching in his seat and producing a small, blue velvet box from the pocket of his jacket and pushing it across a table that’s sticky with grease and sugar and melting ice and she’s cocking a playful eyebrow at him and murmuring _what is it_ and he’s saying _a Christmas present_ and nudging it towards her and she’s blushing as she opens it and it’s a _ring_ , a thin gold band with a princess-cut garnet in the center, and she’s instinctively bringing her hand up to the matching choker locket around her neck and he’s stammering something about _thinking of her when he saw it_ and Lily—

Lily hauls herself onto her knees and leans over the detritus of empty white plates and accordion straw wrappers and half-full ketchup bottles and she _kisses him_.

 

* * *

 

** 1996 **

 

* * *

 

**_January_ **

\--

It’s strange to have a secret.

To have a _good_ secret.

Regulus suggests somewhat haltingly that it’s unlikely any of their friends would understand—his, because Lily’s address is on the wrong side of the lake; hers, because of Sirius and the weird St. Riddle’s stuff and the generally awful reputation that the Black family now has around town.

So—their relationship stays a secret.

And as often as Lily dreams about holding his hand in the cafeteria and kissing him against her locker and taping clichéd strips of arcade photo booth pictures to the front of her English binder—

She doesn’t think she’d trade what they _do_ have together, not for any of that.

Because they meet at the boathouse after school most days and they go ice skating on the frozen pond in the woods behind her house and they take the train to Syracuse the last weekend in January to go to a basketball game and it’s—it’s _new_ and it’s exciting and it’s _theirs_ , no one else’s, and it feels like the flinching, fleeting start of something special, the initial charcoal pencil sketch of a gorgeous oil painting—and she wants to savor it. _Treasure_ it. Hold it close and view it from impossible angles and figure out how to make it her destiny.

It scares her, how fast she falls in love with him.

 

* * *

 

**_February_ **

\--

He calls it _crossfaded_.

She calls it _moronic_.

But there’s an empty bottle of her mom’s Chardonnay on the coffee table and the sickly saccharine scent of marijuana wafting through the vents of the floor heater and her brain is… _light_ , kind of, weightless in the oceanic cavern of her skull, floating—spinning—drifting—and there’s laughter perched on her tonsils, bouncing like a ping pong ball on a spring-loaded diving board, and there’s a rerun of _Friends_ playing on TV that has an unnecessarily convoluted subplot involving an elevator and a jellyfish and maybe a denim vest and Lily’s just—

Lily’s fucking _over it_.

“It’s, like, _really_ hot in here, right?” she asks, fanning her face with her free hand; she’s already down to her underwear and a cropped red t-shirt and Regulus is still in jeans and a long-sleeved orange flannel.

“It’s…warm?” he hedges.

She peels her shirt off, adjusting the straps of her bra so they don’t slide down her arms, and Regulus coughs, violently.

“It’s _hot_ ,” she corrects him, reaching out to prod him in the bicep. “How are you _wearing_ that?”

He sneaks a peek at her thighs and then her breasts and then clears his throat, tugging at the two-button cuff of his shirt.

“Do you…how much do you know about what happened at St. Riddle’s?”

She stretches her legs out and wiggles her toes.

“Just what they reported on the news. Why?”

“Tom—uh, _Riddle_ , the principal—he was a bad guy,” Regulus says, drumming his fingers along Lily’s kneecap. “Like, _a bad guy_.”

“He was a crazy cult leader. He was definitely a bad guy.”

“The news got a lot of that stuff wrong. It wasn’t a cult, technically.”

“Didn’t they find blood? Like—for drinking?”

Regulus scowls.

“Yeah, that was a set-up. Tom…he’s smart. Really smart. And he knew the FBI was investigating him, and he didn’t want to get labeled a terrorist, so he, like, bought a book on Satanists and decided to use _that_ as a cover for his…pretty nasty homegrown approach to politics.”

Lily purses her lips.

“Politics,” she repeats.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

He fidgets, wrinkling his nose and abruptly looking so profoundly _uncomfortable_ that Lily nearly offers to change the subject—

Without warning, he yanks at the buttons on his shirt with enough force to scatter several of them around the living room. He rolls up his left sleeve, hands visibly shaking, and heaves a breath that’s shot straight through with shrapnel clips of bitter amusement and sour nostalgia and _regret_ , God, and then he’s showing her the flat of his forearm and—

There’s a tattoo there, a skeletal black skull with a serpent slithering through its eye socket. She doesn’t know what it means, but there’s a violence to it, intangible and irascible, that dries out her mouth and sharpens her senses and makes her curl her hand into a small, reflexive fist against the corduroy cushion of the couch.

“I used the payphone outside the diner in Montauk.”

“What?”

“To call the FBI,” he murmurs. “I was the one who tipped them off. I was the one—it was graffiti at first, you know? Bullshit. Mean pranks. I could live with it. But then—he was going to _hurt people_ , Lily, he had these—these _plans_ , and no one was going to _stop him_ , and it wasn’t bullshit anymore, it was—it was everything Sirius said it would be when he left home and everything my parents said it _wouldn’t be_ when I joined up and I couldn’t—I couldn’t.”

She blinks.

She processes.

She swings her legs up and around so that she’s straddling his lap and peering into his eyes and he’s gripping the naked curve of her waist like she’s his tether to reality or his buoy in a churning stampede of hurricane waves and she’s _anchoring him_ to something, something important, and it’s frightening and it’s immense and she thinks, maybe, that it’s _true_.

“No one knows, then,” she says.

“No.”

“Oh, _Regulus_.”

She’s kissing him before she can stop herself and he’s combing his fingers through the tangled ends of her hair and she’s wishing fiercely, wishing _ferociously_ , that he won’t always need her like this.

 

* * *

 

**_March_ **

\--

He brings up Sirius on a crisp, sunny Saturday morning in late winter.

They’re sitting on the end of the boat dock sharing a floral plastic thermos of hot chocolate, his arm slung loosely around her shoulders—and she’d forgotten a hat, which had prompted him to give her his, and so she currently has an enormous, navy plaid, fur-lined trapper’s cap tugged over her head, complete with sagging ear flaps and an adjustable leather chin strap. It’s at least two sizes too big. She thinks she might keep it.

“What does he—does he talk about me? At all? Ever?” Regulus blurts out, idly running his hand up and down her arm. “I mean. Does he—what does he _say_?”

She studies him for a minute; he looks a little like he’s dreading her answer, and a little like he already knows what it is, and a little like he’s hoping she’s going to prove him wrong.

“Sirius mentions you, yeah,” she says carefully. “He just—he blames you for…for a lot of what happened with your parents. For—well. For other things, too, I guess.”

And Lily—she doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone look so sad and so _angry_ , all at the same time. There’s a staggering incongruity to it; a dissonance that _resonates_ , pricks at her skin and worms into her veins and _stays_ , stays and bleeds loneliness and permanent ink like a tattoo, like a brand, like a _scar_.

“He left,” Regulus finally mutters. “He just—he _left_. Him. Not me. _Him_. How is that my fault? Why does he get to—to _blame me_ for something _he_ did?”

Lily gently swings her legs back and forth, the toes of her boots skimming the water.

“That’s not it, though,” she replies. “He’s blaming you for what you _didn’t_ do. You didn’t go with him. You didn’t take his side. You didn’t—”

Regulus blinks, dropping his other arm from the bend of his knee and turning slightly so that he can meet her eyes—and the dock creaks, and the breeze whispers, and she has to _swallow_ her next breath, she does, has to _hold it_ —because there’s intensity the way that other people convey it, with glares and grimaces and glowers, and there’s intensity the way that _Regulus_ conveys it, with the serious slant of his cheekbones and the exaggerated curve of his upper lip, with the breadth of his shoulders and the textbook-perfect line of his posture—and he’s beautiful, _beautiful_ , she’s always thought so, even when he’s blending into the background, hiding in the shadows, waiting to be caught or found or figured out; but he’s beautiful _now_ , too, in the blistering cold light of day, the coarse black stubble on his jaw catching the sun, glinting onyx and mahogany and auburn.

“That’s bullshit,” he says, sounding incredulous.

Lily hesitates.

“That’s _Sirius_.”

 

* * *

 

**_April_ **

\--

She wastes a Sunday afternoon at the lake teaching Regulus to skip rocks.

“How are you so bad at this?” she bleats, twisting her hair into a messy topknot and shooting him a mischievous grin. “You’re worse than Marlene, and she was distracted by shirtless water polo players.”

Regulus ducks his head and fiddles with the small grey pebble in his hand.

“Yeah. I didn’t—spend much time outdoors. Growing up. Not like Sirius. I mostly…did a lot of stuff with my parents. Rallies, conferences—our mom, she’s—uh—she’s a lobbyist in Albany, did you know?”

Lily scoffs and flicks her wrist, skipping another rock, counting the splashes— _one, two, three_ —

“ _Everyone_ knows who your parents are, Regulus. That’s what made those rumors about the St. Riddle’s fiasco so... _terrifying_? Yeah? Terrifying.”

He nods, pensive and slow.

“Speaking of _knowing_ —Marlene—knows about us? Yeah?”

“She’s my best friend,” Lily shrugs. “She knows.”

His tongue darts out and he squints down at the water, still rolling his pebble around and around with his fingers.

“And she doesn’t—” He cuts himself off, gnawing on his thumbnail, lowering his eyes as he jerks his chin at his left forearm. “She doesn’t _care_?”

Lily opens her mouth to tell him that he’s being _ridiculous_ , of _course_ Marlene doesn’t _care_ —except she remembers how _grim_ Regulus had looked back in January, how he’d avoided her gaze and spent the whole conversation with his arms crossed over his abdomen, as if even through the wool of his jacket he’d needed the security of hiding his tattoo, his _mark_ , from her and them and it’s _that_ —that gaping wound he never seems to know what to do with—it’s _that_ that forces her to pause.

“When we were in middle school,” she suddenly says, weighing her words as she speaks them, “there were these guys who liked to make jokes about Marlene—about her being a fucking _mail-order bride_ —because she’s half-Korean, right? Racist assholes, yeah, but—they did it for most of eighth grade.”

Regulus furrows his brow.

“Okay?”

Lily sniffs.

“I punched one of them in the nose,” she goes on. “Clean break.”

His lips part on a short, disbelieving huff, and then he’s chuckling, teeth glinting sharp and straight as the sun sets in waning bursts of pink and red and orange.

“You’re protective of your friends,” he remarks, almost too casually, tapping his pebble against the peeling whitewash of the dock.

She frowns, tilting her head to the side.

“The only things people should _ever_ feel ashamed for are their actions,” she says. “Not their roots. You—you made a bad choice, yeah, but then you made a _better_ one. Okay?”

His nostrils flare as he clenches his jaw, turning to stare at her, unblinking and _unafraid_ , and it’s—

It’s like being under a microscope.

It’s like he’s peeling her apart, piece by piece, to try and find the lie.

It breaks her heart and it puts it back together and she wonders if it’s occurred to him that he isn’t alone anymore.

He doesn’t end up tossing the pebble into the water.

 

* * *

 

**_May_ **

\--

Regulus buys them tickets to see Oasis in Manhattan.

“ _And all the roads we have to walk are winding_ ,” he drones in the boathouse, voice echoing and crackling as he collapses with laughter, forehead dropping onto her shoulder—and she rolls her eyes, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth, and wraps her arms around his waist, toppling him over so he’s flat on his back and she’s straddling his knees.

“ _And after all_ ,” she teases, leaning down, the curtain of her hair shielding them from the lone beam of sunlight filtering in from outside. “ _You’re my wonderwall._ ”

He smirks. His expression is uncharacteristically playful— _pleased_ —but there’s a gravity to the atmosphere that’s making her smile fade and her heartbeat stutter and something sweet and faintly bitter begin to swell inside her chest like a too-full balloon and she _loves_ him, loves his happiness and his sadness and the way he’s gradually quit looking at her like she’s a question mark, _the_ question mark—because she isn’t—he isn’t— _they_ aren’t, no, they’re the exclamation point at the end of the sentence and she _loves_ that, loves him, loves that she doesn’t even know what the sentence _is_ , not yet, and isn’t that half the adventure? 

“ _Because maybe_ ,” he whispers, cupping her jaw and sweeping his thumb across the cushion of her lower lip. “ _You’re the one that’s gonna save me_ …”

 

* * *

 

**_June_ **

\--

The night before graduation, they’re sprawled across Regulus’s bed with the volume on his TV switched off and the enormous bay window flung wide open. She’s stripped down to her black satin bra and a pair of cut-off jean shorts. He’s still completely dressed. The silence between them strikes her as oddly fragile, and she can’t stop toying with the edge of his Egyptian linen pillow case.

“It’s like…it’s like tomorrow’s the end of something good, isn’t it?” he asks in a tone that’s decidedly difficult to interpret—and that stings, just a little, because it’s been months since he’d been so guarded with her, months since he’d shielded her from his thoughts and his feelings and his _honesty_.

And yet—

She understands, maybe.

She understands what he means about _something good_ and she understands what he means about it being _the end_ and it’s stupid, yeah, _so_ stupid, but it’s also inevitable.

That stings more.

“I don’t…” she trails off, turning on her side to face him.

She doesn’t continue.

There’s the sound of crickets chirping a lonely, discordant melody—

He doesn’t respond.

—and the slip and slide of his sheets against her ribs, smooth and quiet and _gentle_.

She reaches up, drags her fingertips across his cheeks and his jaw and his neck.

The moment stretches.

 _Aches_ .

Pulls and tears and unravels.

And then—

He’s kissing her and she’s kissing him and it’s explosive and chaotic and she feels it in her _spine_ , feels it curdle through her bones and flutter around her abdomen and wrench her breath from the back of her throat—

It’s different after that.

She peels his shirt off and presses her mouth to the center of his chest. He undoes the clasp of her bra with a trembling sort of efficiency—two tries, not three, not four, and she would giggle if it wasn’t for his hands on her waist, hot and heavy, unzipping her shorts and flattening the curve of his palm over the front of her underwear and _lingering_ , unrushed and unhurried, thumb barely grazing the entrance to her cunt through a thin layer of lace and cotton. She plucks at his jeans, and he kicks them off without bothering to let go of her, her skin, her body—and she grinds her pelvis into his, shivering when his cock brushes her clit, and he groans and she bites his lip and he’s rummaging for a condom in his bedside drawer before she can even manage to pant _Regulus, Regulus, Regulus_ —

He pushes into her with one long thrust.

And she considers how easy it would be to close her eyes and get lost in the _sensation_ of it all—her thighs spread wide and her legs around his hips and his breath on her lips, her name on his tongue, his hands on her breasts and her heels digging into his back and she’s _full_ , she’s full of him and she’s full of the realization that she isn’t ready to lose them or lose this and she isn’t ready for life to be unfair, isn’t ready to accept that it probably always has been, and yeah, _yes_ , it’s _an_ ending but not _the_ ending and his fingers are slightly clumsy as they drift down to her clit and that makes her _smile_ , makes her shudder and choke on a broken moan and when she comes, when she arches her back and clutches his shoulders and cries out—her orgasm isn’t quick, isn’t like the flickering lightning pop of a Fourth of July sparkler, no, it’s _slow_ , it’s a ripple and a wave and a coasting cresting crash that reminds her of lazy kisses in the shade of the boathouse, drenched in sunshine and secrecy, and it’s a fucking—

It’s a fucking revelation.

It’s a vow and it’s a promise and it’s a _beginning_.

“I love you,” he gasps, catching her eyes and not letting go. “I _love_ you.”

They fall asleep sticky with sex and sweat.

She doesn’t remember to set an alarm; she wakes up an hour late for graduation rehearsal and speeds through getting dressed, grabbing one of Regulus’s discarded flannel shirts in the process.

Until she thinks, abruptly—

 _Sirius will notice_ .

She can’t help but flash her rearview mirror a grin, small and sly and private, as she starts her car.

 

* * *

 

**_July_ **

\--

The news breaks on a Monday.

St. Riddle’s is reopening for the fall semester.

Regulus seems more resigned than surprised.

Lily doesn’t say anything—she just looks at the tattoo on his forearm, traces the gleaming black lines of it with her eyes, memorizing and memorizing and _muting_ , yeah, because the noise of it had drowned out all the good parts of Regulus for too long, for _so_ long, and she wishes she could fix that, wishes she could go in and rearrange the dictionary and _change_ the definition of the word _permanent_ , the word _forever_ , wishes she had met him first, had _had him_ first—

She laces their fingers together.

He’s wearing sunglasses, but she imagines she can see his gaze soften as he glances at her.

“I’ll visit you every weekend,” he murmurs, voice slightly thick. He pauses, then snorts. “I’ll have to.”

She squeezes his hand.

She can only hold on tighter.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry and/or scream about Regulily with me on [tumblr](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com).


End file.
